All patriarchal societies in history have always imposed a single currency with positives interest rates – top down – it is actually an extraction device and we still have that.

All societies that honor feminine values (Matrifocal societies like Egypt – or central middle ages) use several currencies – an ecosystem of currencies – some of these currencies which are identical to the patriarchal one’s are used for long-distance-trade.

more sophisticated: the have “demurage” – a negative interest rate – which is a penalty in keeping and storing money – so it becomes a pure medium of exchange – not at all a store of value – you would be crazy to store a value when there is a penalty in keeping.

2nd Level/Layer) about 100 years old:

All fields of human sciences including economics but also sociology, anthropology have all completely polarized between capitalism and communism – as two poles of interpretation of how to organize a modern or industrial society.

That polarization has created a tension on everything that is different between them – there are millions of books about what is different between capitalism and communism – there are zero books that study

what they (capitalism and communism) have in common – blind spot – that is:

the use of a singular currency, on the national level, created by bank-debt, with interest.

i would add: they both failed on preventing corruption

differences are:

in communism / soviet system: the banks were owned by the government

in capitalism – the governments only own the banks when the banks fall apart

… the rest is the same.

3rd Level/Layer): The Academic BlindSpot

try to publish an article in the quarterly Journal of American Economics on questioning the money-system – no way you get it published in this “prestigious” journal – it is locked.

i have no problems with economics using mathematics – but what you have is the evidence and the proof – that the mathematics they use is wrong – the mathematical model is wrong since the 19th century – we haven’t gotten out of it – we are still talking about prices being formed by supply and demand and automatically getting to an equilibrium – in fact – the same product in the same city has very different prices depending on the supermarket and it should not be there – according to that model – so reality is proofing us – that this is a very abstract way of looking at reality that does not fit the way economics really is.

Solution:

When you do an open system – then the model that we are proposing which is a complex flow network (like in any natural ecosystem) in which money circulates is the valid one – and we have the proof from thousands of examples of natural ecosystems that this is not stable – unless you put diversity and inter-connectivity within a particular range.

We need to rethink – which mathematics are used and which theoretical framework is being used – which just requires rethinking the entire economic field – which is of course very exciting – for those who want to create something.

There is a huge amount of work to be done – everything needs to be redone.

ideological blockage

it has been attempted by Nicolas Georgescu-Roegen (Mathematician, Statistician and Economist) in the 1960s/1970s – but has never been integrated back into economics – has never been integrated into mainstream-economics.

I found it interesting that Samuelson who wrote the preface of Georgescu‘s book basically said: all economists should read this book.

Nicolas Georgescu-Roegen is the scholar of the scholars – and the economist of the economists – really hardcore – and no economist should be ignorant of the implications of entropy in the field – because it really questions everything.

Samuelson himself has never changed his book (to reflect that) – it ran through another 20 editions without changing it (in that direction in any way) – so there is an ideological blockage.

The

biggest problem

i see in the economic framework – besides the definition of an open system – as opposed to a closed system – which is the way it is usually taught – is what do we do what they call “extranalaties”.

In the economic field you have a theoretical framework that is perfectly rational and perfectly mathematical coherent – but it is not related to anything outside of it’s framework.

This is a structural problem – and if you deal with structural problems you need to have structural solutions – if you don’t you just gonna repeat the cycle.

“If you would work harder – we would not have economic problems” (governments would not be in debt and so on):

FALSE! if there are “STRUCTURAL PROBLEMS IN YOUR ECONOMIC MODEL.”

What i am proposing as a model is: You have the economy as a center – and you have around it the human-social system were economics is a subset of – there are lots of things we do that are not economic.

And the social-system itself is a subset of the biosphere – so the three fall into each other – and therefore there are no analogies in that approach – that is the model – which is called

It is the quintessence of the thought that has been focused on the economic reality.

Henceforce all economists must take these conclusions into account lest their analyses and scholarship be found wanting.

“The entropy of the physical universe increases constantly because there is a continuous and irrevocable qualitative degradation of order into chaos.

The entropic nature of the economic process, which degrades natural resources and pollutes the environment, constitutes the present danger. The earth is entropically winding down naturally, and economic advance is accelerating the process. Man must learn to ration the meager resources he has so profligately squandered if he is to survive in the long run when the entropic degradation of the sun will be the crucial factor, “for suprising as it may seem, the entire stock of natural resources is not worth more than a few days of sunlight!” Georgescu-Rogen has written our generation’s classic in the field of economics.”Library Journal

What is Entropy? Same as Diffusion? Seems similar.

“The only way to prevent things from getting disordered – is to apply some energy to them – your body for instance is very ordered and the only way it stays ordered is that you spend a ton of energy holding it together in an ordered fashion – the day that you die – you no longer are expending any energy that hols your body together and your body will fall apart.”

James, H (2012): Making the European Monetary Union: the role of the Committee of Central Bank Governors and the origins of the European Central Bank, Cambridge-London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

See also this is the biz, the booklet produced for the BIS’s 75th anniversary exhibition.

Related Links:

Related Pictures:

Off-Topic:

VIAF: The Virtual International Authority File

The VIAF® (Virtual International Authority File) combines multiple name authority files into a single OCLC-hosted name authority service. The goal of the service is to lower the cost and increase the utility of library authority files by matching and linking widely-used authority files and making that information available on the Web.

The Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) is “a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing information costs”.[2] It was founded in 1967 as the Ohio College Library Center. OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the largest online public access catalog (OPAC) in the world.

regular price is 180€!!! but you can apply for scholarship, deadline applications is 30th January 2017, and its resolution will take place on 15 February 2017. The award of 25 scholarships will be carried out according to the motivations and justifications submitted by applicants.

The 2nd International Conference on Complementary Currency Systems will be held from the 19th to the 23rd of June 2013 in The Hague, The Netherlands. The conference will be hosted by ISS. (International Space Station? :-D)

The conference is bilingual (English and Spanish), with sessions organized in either language. It offers space to academics, local government officials and practitioners alike to organize panels, workshops, and other session formats that participants see fit to stimulate the exchange of ideas and experiences.

Community and complementary currency systems include initiatives like the LETS, time banks, the Argentine Redes de Trueque, the Ithaca Hours in the USA, the German Regiogeld, the Brasilian community banks with surrogate currencies, the SOL currency in France, the ‘Transition Towns’ in the UK, the RES in Belgium and the Wir in Switzerland, mobile-phone payment systems in Uganda and Kenya, and for digital remittances in El Salvador.

Structure of the conference

The conference will get together academics, local government officials and other policy makers, practitioners and representatives of grassroots organisations related to Complementary Currency Systems. The conference will have three strands with special events for each one of these publics (more information on each one of them below)

Day 1 & Day 2 (June 19 and June 20) specialized events for academics. This strand of the conference is organized by the Civic Innovation Research Initiative at ISS. More information here.

Day 3 (June 21) specialized events for local government officials and policy-makers. This strand of the conference is organized by QOIN. More information here.

Day 4 & day 5 (June 22 and June 23) are open events for representatives of grassroots organisations, doers, practitioners and activists.More information here.

1. The Academic Conference

The 2nd International Conference on Complementary and Community Currency Systems invites you to explore the ways in which CCS and the multiplicity of monetary circuits affect local development, households’ welfare, governance and civil society organizations. It follows from the previous International Conference on Complementary and Community Currencies organised in Lyon in February 2011.

The concept of development has a variety of meanings to different social groups, including economic and environmental sustainability, community resilience after shocks, political autonomy, and culturally embedded economic systems. Moreover, the conference seeks to consolidate the practice of meeting every two years to share and discuss research in the area of CCS, the ontology of money and alternative economic systems with own means of payment. The conference seeks to advance knowledge on three aspects of CCS: 1) Their innovativeness; 2) Their viability, and 3) Their Impact. Papers will be arranged around these three aspects. The academic closing will summarize the collective learning achieved in them, which will later be reflected in the conference publications.

This event is fully booked and registration is closed.

Keynote speakers on the academic event:

Professor Katherine Gibson, Institute of Culture and Society (ICS), University of Western Sydney, Human and Economic Geography, Australia

All over the world people are experimenting with different ways of organizing their economies such that the wellbeing of humans and non-humans alike is placed at the centre of concern. Given the challenges for development in a climate changing world in which inequality is not decreasing, it is incumbent on us to look seriously at these experiments and to work out ways of strengthening their capacity to achieve this goal. Complementary currencies are one such experiment. In this presentation I explore a range of ways that people are ‘taking back’ transactions as vehicles for ethical interconnection. What kinds of encounters with distant and proximate others are possible as we seek to obtain what we need to live well that we can’t produce ourselves? Is it possible to enact an ethic of care in the process of exchange? As we become more aware of the other with whom we are connected via transaction, our economic subjectivity shifts and it is possible to begin to think of inhabiting a community economy. I draw on the technologies of self-inventory and ethical exploration elaborated in my new co-authored book Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide For Transforming Our Communities (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013) to suggest how together, we might move towards a different vision of development in which wellbeing is a direct, rather than trickled down, outcome.

Akinobu Kuroda is professor of Financial History at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia at the University of Tokyo

‘Locality of Money Ubiquitous through Human History’

The global history of money is full of local colour. Some communities, such as early modern England and Japan depended on communal credit to make transactions. And certain merchants, like those in traditional China, shared an accounting unit which was different from the one used outside their town or business. Some municipal governments or institutions, such as the chambers of commerce in USA in the midst of Great Depression, issued currencies acceptable within their spheres. Less grand-scale, but just as important schemes were set up by smaller communities. Currencies supplied by unofficial agents like a grocery or a liquor shop were often in circulation among locals, although they did not have any legal guarantees nor were they intrinsically valued. Local currencies appeared in varied forms, from cowry shells to paper notes. Some of them appeared as solutions to specific emergencies.However, the frequent emergence of currencies at the local level suggests that locality may be one of the necessary characteristics and basic preconditions for currencies to become generally acceptable, instead of just a temporary solution. The ubiquity of local currencies throughout history suggests that both state oriented perspectives on the acceptability of currencies (macro point of view) and individually based perspectives (micro) are inadequate to explain the emergence of money.

Professor Keith Hart is Centennial Professor of Economic Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Co-Director of the Human Economy Programme, University of Pretoria.

The euro crisis is a consequence of the neoliberal idea that politics can be banished from monetary policy, a dream shared by the techno-utopians who designed BitCoin. But it also represents the collapse of national capitalism as the dominant economic system of our times. This impasse ought to represent an opportunity for community currencies – and I once thought so – but many of them unconsciously retain the assumptions of national capitalism. Here I propose a strategy for a “human economy”. This must be informed by an economic vision capable of bridging the gap between everyday life (what people know) and humanity’s common predicament, which is inevitably impersonal and lies beyond the actor’s point of view (what they don’t know). Emergent world society is the new human universal – not an idea, but the fact of our shared occupation of the planet crying out for new principles of association. Small may be beautiful and a preference for initiatives grounded in local social realities is unchallengeable, but large-scale bureaucracies, whether governments or business corporations, are also essential if our aspirations for economic democracy are to embrace the movement of the world we live in. Money and markets should take forms that are more conducive to this end. It helps to recognize that they span the extremes of human experience. Money reflects our human potential to make universal society.

Bruno Théret

“Monetary experiments of complementarity among state moneys in contemporary federal polities: some general principles and the case of the bocade of the Province of Tucuman in Argentina between 1984 and 2003”

Interviews

2. Policy makers and government officials conference

Today’s governments are confronted with enormous challenges: a pressing need to cut in public budget expenditures. Complementary currencies seem to be a potential instrument for governments that can be employed to realize specific social goals while saving on the expenses of (ordinary) money and public expenditures. Globally, a vast amount of diverse complementary currencies is in place. These programs try to solve very specific social issues within society.

Complementary currencies depart from the notion that money is essentially a human invention and instrument to influence the relations between citizens and organizations. A solid theoretical framework legitimizes this idea and in the past hundred years a lot of experimentation and experience was picked up with realizing social goals by the implementation of complementary currencies.

However, intelligence on complementary currencies is dispersed: there’s an abundance of authors, academics and experts that have published books, websites, articles and leaflets and organized seminars, congresses and workshops. Information is often insufficiently documented and on some relevant subjects sources seem to be contradictory. This body of knowledge aims for bringing understanding and clarity; it provides an overview of the most important complementary currencies that exist today. Its goal is to provide and disclose information in an impartial manner, making it easier to apply and integrate knowledge on complementary currencies to real issues.

This event is fully booked and registration is closed.

3. Practitioners, doers, grassroots organizations

Following the experiences and feedback of the first International Conference on Complementary Currency Systems in Lyon, February 2011, these two day following the academic and policy-makers orientated days oft he 2nd International Conference of Complementary Currency Systems are dedicated to practitioners, doers, organizers, advocates, networkers and activists in the field of complementary and community currencies.

Objectives and Programme

These two days will provide participants with an opportunity to meet, interact, exchange, collaborate, teach, train, learn, develop, work, plan, strategize and explore the present and future of the community currency “movement“ together.

In the spirit of true participation, this event will be organized in an “Open Space“ format, allowing the participants themselves to determine the topics and objectives of the individual sessions.

Prior to the event, registered participants will be invited to suggest topics and sessions in an on-line process.

The event will take place at the same venue as the the other meetings on preceding days, or within walking distance from there. Participation in these two days is free of charge, but registration is obligatory.

The working language of these two days will be English, but break-out session in other languages are welcome and impromptu translation for plenary sessions will be organized.

This event is fully booked and registration is closed.

The practitioners event is co-organized with the EU funded Community Currency in Action project represented by the New Economics Foundation in London, ccia@neweconomics.org, the Banco Palmas Institute Europe and FMDV.

Participants arriving in The Netherlands will land at Schiphol Airport, near Amsterdam. The distance from the airport to The Hague is about 40 kilometres and the train provides the fastest and cheapest way to reach The Hague. The use of a taxi between Schiphol and The Hague is very expensive. Although ISS is part of Erasmus University of Rotterdam, the ISS is located in THE HAGUE. Please make sure that you take the train to DEN HAAG (Dutch for THE HAGUE) and not to Rotterdam. You can check the timetable at www.ns.nl

You should buy a one way train ticket to DEN HAAG and a one way ticket costs about 8 Euro. The train takes approximately 45 minutes to reach The Hague. The train usually leaves from platform 5, but please check this when you buy the ticket. The Hague has 2 train stations, ‘Den Haag Centraal Station'(CS) and ‘Den Haag Hollands Spoor’ (HS). Both are equally convenient.

Public transport in The Hague:

From Centraal Station (CS): Tram 17 or Bus 22 and 24 Stop: Mauritskade

From Hollands Spoor (HS): Tram 1 Stop: Mauritskade

At both stations you will also taxis. Ask the driver to take you to Kortenaerkade 12. The taxi ride will cost approximately 12 Euro.

The registration fee does not include accomodation. Please find here information about hotels we have agreed a special rate for the conference.

For the CCS2013 participants, the Parkhotel Den Haag has made us a special group offer of Euro 100 for single rooms, Euro 120 for a double room with single occupancy, and 135 Euro for a double room with double occupancy. All prices include breakfast with organic products.

When making your reservation in the Park Hotel Den Haag or any of the other hotels mentioned, make sure to mention that you are a participant of the CCS Conference at the ISS.

The Bretton Woods system after the 2008 crisis

In the wake of the Global financial crisis of 2008, policymakers and others have called for a new international monetary system that some of them also dub Bretton Woods II. On the other side, this crisis has revived the debate about Bretton Woods II.[Notes 5]

On 26 September 2008, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said, “we must rethink the financial system from scratch, as at Bretton Woods.”[44]

On 24–25 September 2009 US President Obama hosted the G20 in Pittsburgh. A realignment of currency exchange rates was proposed. This meeting’s policy outcome could be known as the Pittsburgh Agreement of 2009, where deficit nations may devalue their currencies and surplus nations may revalue theirs upward.

In March 2010, Prime Minister Papandreou of Greece wrote an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune, in which he said, “Democratic governments worldwide must establish a new global financial architecture, as bold in its own way as Bretton Woods, as bold as the creation of the European Community and European Monetary Union. And we need it fast.” In interviews coinciding with his meeting with President Obama, he indicated that Obama would raise the issue of new regulations for the international financial markets at the next G20 meetings in June and November 2010.

Over the course of the crisis, the IMF progressively relaxed its stance on “free-market” principles such as its guidance against using capital controls. In 2011, the IMF’s managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn stated that boosting employment and equity “must be placed at the heart” of the IMF’s policy agenda.[45] The World Bank indicated a switch towards greater emphases on job creation.[46][47]

However, Deutsche Bank’s Sanjeev Sanyal has argued that the insistence on global balance is fundamentally flawed and that sustained economic growth has always relied on symbiotic imbalances. This means that the world will eventually have to accept a return to new period of imbalance that he calls Bretton Woods III.[42]